The NFL schedule will be released later this week, and according to NFL insider Adam Schefter, some major changes are on the way.
Schefter reported Monday afternoon that the schedule will include a game on Black Friday for the first time ever. Black Friday, which is the day after Thanksgiving, has typically been reserved for college football games.
Another new change coming to the schedule is that teams can be on Thursday Night Football twice. NFL games have been played on Thursday night since 2006 but previously teams could only appear once per season on Thursday Night Football.
A couple of other changes coming include that not all teams will have a game in primetime and games won’t belong to certain networks anymore. All games will be free agents, whereas in the past, NFC games were on Fox and AFC games were on CBS.
The full schedule is set to be released on Thursday. There was some concern earlier Monday that the schedule might not be released on Monday. However, the NFL announced Monday afternoon that the schedule is good to go.
The schedule release show will take place Thursday, May 11 at 8 p.m. It will be a three-hour show on the NFL Network as every game for the 2023-24 season will be revealed.
Sunday Ticket litigation could reveal secrets the NFL doesn’t want out
The NFL is currently facing litigation over its Sunday Ticket package and the proceedings are leading to some league secrets entering the public domain. The litigation is part of a class action lawsuit against the NFL.
The Athletic’s Daniel Kaplan recently reported on the litigation, which revealed the contenders for the Sunday Ticket package when it was up for grabs last year. The NFL ended up choosing YouTube TV but the other companies vying for it were Apple, Amazon, Roku and ESPN. Another option the league considered was distributing it itself.
Federal magistrate judge John McDermott filed a decision late last month, noting in his decision that the plantiffs want to know more about the discussions between Apple and the NFL.
“Plaintiffs also are concerned that there are few documents regarding the breakdown of negotiations between Apple and the NFL,” McDermott wrote. “Public reporting suggests the negotiations broke down because the NFL refused to let Apple distribute local games or offer Sunday Ticket at significantly lower prices. The NFL, however, argues that documents it has produced suggest numerous reasons why the negotiations failed. None of the reasons cited by (the) NFL and Apple contained any reference to Sunday Ticket package pricing.”
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